On the home stretch of IRLS 672

As we approach the home stretch of IRLS 672, I'm asked to reflect on where I was when I started and where I am now, and not just from a technical standpoint. Of course, the technical stuff is the obvious stuff at this point, but once this knowledge either gets used and becomes integrated - or heavens forbid - isn't used and is forgotten, what will remain of my 672 experience?

At this point, my guess is that one of the main things I have gained is confidence and comfort level in working with lower-level (read advanced) computer applications such as Command Line Interface (CLI) in a Linux environment and also with Apache, mySQL and PHP. I have a much better "feel" for how well-integrated the LAMP environment is for setting up a useful web server and feel more empowered to get under the hood if I need to make a change or to fix something that isn't working the way I would like. I certainly know that I am only making a beginning at understanding how all these programs work and there are a lot of situations where I won't have a clue about how or what to do, but still, I'll have some concept of what's going on behind the curtain.

I have certainly gained a lot of perspective from reading from the rest of the section. There are people from all over the country working in this area and lots of interesting projects that they have experience with. It's been great to hear their stories and to gain from their experiences in the realm of digital collections and with libraries in the digital age. This course has been a fantastic way to begin my DigIn program and I'm very much looking forward to the challenges and rewards in the semesters ahead.

mySQL - more about databases

This week was more about databases. I enjoyed actually working with mySQL, although it is challenging to remember the commands. I'm sure that if I had enough practice, it would come in time.

I had to re-install, or perhaps install for the first time webmin on the practice machine. It was no big deal, but I did have to dig through many of the past assignments to find the procedure for adding it. I do notice that it went easier this time than ever before, so I must be learning something here.

I also installed phpMyAdmin this week and found it really helpful when working with mySQL. Who would have guessed. There is some duplication between webmin and phpMyAdmin, but I like the interface on phpMyAdmin better for working with mySQL. If I got really versed in the command line for mySQL, I might use it for more stuff, but for now, I would tend to use phpMyAdmin for most database stuff. It has the nice feature of showing you the mySQL commands that you entered, which I make sure to study each time I do something, so it is reinforcing my understanding of the language.

We are now heading into the last leg of the LAMP journey. I can hardly believe that July is about over and that August will soon be here. I just have to keep up the juggling act for a few more weeks and then a small break before jumping right back into the Fall semester and more juggling.

Databases - ERDs for nerds!

This week was pretty heavy-duty. There was a lot of information to take in about databases. There was the whole planning thing, meaning we had a bunch of Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) information. Some of the tutorial information seems to conflict at times, maybe just the way the drawings were done. At any rate, I need to continue to review that information and at the same time I need to practice working with the commands for mysql, which doesn't look too bad, but the command line style interface information is now getting a bit muddled with the CLI stuff I learned in working with Linux already. It's a lot of information to digest at such a rapid clip. I'm confident I can learn it, I'll just need to practice it over time and it will begin to gel in a while. That's my experience with these kinds of things.

Still, I'm excited about databases. They really intrigue me because they seem so useful and powerful. It is just amazing to me how much can be done with information by using databases. I especially like working with media databases. My Discussion this week included one of my favorite archive websites: Dimitri Tiomkin collection: http://www.dimitritiomkin.com/index.cfm. I highly recommend taking a look - and listen to it.

Technology - plan the work, work the plan

This week we've been doing a lot of reading on technology planning - or the lack of it, mostly. The reading that I most enjoyed, if that is the word for it, was called the Chaos Report by the Standish Group, from way back in 1995 (along with the follow up study called "What Went Wrong" by KPMG in Canada. I'm guessing that things have not improved significantly since then, based on my experiences in the technology world thus far. The high rate of failure for software projects across the board is a bit scary, given that our modern world is so dependent on technology to keep us safe and productive. Without question, there is a strong case to be made for improving the way technology is planned and implemented.

This weeks readings also had me thinking about a psychology study I read some years ago that discovered that the people who are least competent think they are way more competent than they are and the more competent people tend to rate themselves as less competent than they really are. Obviously, this is at work in many areas, but when I think about technology and how difficult it is to really know what is going on at a micro and macro level, it seems like this principle may account for a good many of the failures in technology projects.

One guy that seems to know his stuff, Robert E. Dugan wrote a great article on Information Technology Plans in the Journal of Academic Leadership. I appreciated the very practical approach and recommendations he presented. For example, knowing how things work in any organization is important, so he suggests that if the Technology Plan is following in the footsteps of another plan, use the same approach to organizing of the previous plan. If it worked the first time, probably best not to mess around too much and just work with what you already have in place. Dugan also presents a lot of information quickly and concisely and I'm sure to keep his report highlighted for future reference.

I also had the chance to review several state library technology plans this week. Although there is a lot of information presented, it also seems to me that there is a fairly pervasive lack of clarity about how technology can and should be used in state libraries at this point. It's good to know that people are thinking about this important area, but it does seem that we need to work even harder to develop and deploy the most helpful technology so that precious budget dollars aren't squandered for the sake of technolust.

Moving from HTML to XML and beyond!

This week I spent some time learning XML (Extensible Markup Language). It's very handy for containing or describing data, instead of describing how things should look, which is the job of HTML and other flavors of HTML. Of the various learning modules that I looked at, I still like the w3schools.com website, at least for XML and HTML. I like the format and I am able to try things out and see how they work right away, instead of being more passive in learning. The YouTube and UA Computer-Based Training videos were useful, but not quite as effective for my learning style, I think. I do think that the UACBT videos were very helpful and gave me a good chance to review material after reading about it. The pace of the UACBT videos were quite good - no so much on the YouTube "Just Enough XML to Survive" video.

I also spent a good deal of time working on the setup for the practice server. The Dell is doing fine now, and I use it and the VMware both these days. I figure that I can practice on the VMware, since I can take "snapshots" and go back if I make a mistake. I can't do that on the dell machine, so I want to be prepared when I work there. The biggest problem this week came with the introduction of some new FTP software on my Mac. I upgraded Transmit and figured I could just plug and play. I kept getting refused from my own servers when I tried to connect. I eventually exhausted all other possibilities and then took a second look at the new software interface and I had missed a new menu bar that allows for selection of FTP, sFTP, etc. Once I found the sFTP option, I was good to go and got my files all uploaded and downloaded without further incident.